Pain ribbons through my legs, entwines with hamstrings.
She bites and cradles like a vicious lover.
I know all the ways to cleave the ache in half.
My baclofen, tucked away like a prayer:
the last scrap from a past I try to forget. If the need is such, offer me salvation.
The weight released. But I remain splayed out, waiting
To be held again.
I’m fluent in the scripture of medical textbooks:
Spastic dipeligia/lordosis/dorsal rhizotomy is
The silk of my body, is a case study of the effects of
Intracranial hemorrhage is
Selfishness from
Something above me.
– AJ Powell… ...continue reading
My guy is pitched from summer’s throat all blessed and highly favoured.
Like the choir, men who shave pray twice.
First that silver wick against the treeline– he makes a lunch spot out of his jaw, some new place
to give thanks.
The second lives in those wooden stars, twinkling with proof that the sun did press her mouth to
his face and belt.
Oh to be a man and burdened with evidence that somebody loves you. Nerves singing hymnal
while he twists at his flaking skin, snow piling on bathroom tiles.
In the eye of autumn, and with no bruises to press for fun, he takes the love hangover out back
and shows it half the mercy of a man who shaves. The refrain stubbles over.… ...continue reading
In the land of nowhere the man of America is to be found,
in the pieces of nowhere America is to be found,
in the cares of nowhere America is to be found,
yet something is America that is everywhere,
existing in the madness of the grave itself,
but persisting in the sanctity of birth itself,
seeing that America is more than a name,
but an exhalation of one’s fate,
in which one shall be—
damned and loved,
prayed and screwed,
martyred and championed,
killed and crowned,
sought and left,
wept and laughed,
yet this is the land of truth,
whatever truth is,
meaning,
it shall always be—
forever and more,
eternally free.
– Frederick Schardt… ...continue reading
What we leave behind
is not nothing.
It’s a haze around the morning sun.
It’s an unexpected change in direction of the wind.
It’s one frequency in the white noise
of those who came before,
undecipherable static in the background
of the lives of those still in the world.
It’s a shadow in the corner of the wall
in the room where our sons and daughters live.
It’s a small but persistent presence
that shapes what becomes
as surely as hope shapes the coming day.
– Ken Long… ...continue reading
when I was ten Mom would send
Mike and me to the corner laundromat
with a basket of cold wet sheets
she’d slip a few extra coins in our coat pockets
for a bottle of ice cold Coke we’d share
waiting for the loads to dry
when the timer chimed we’d
pull out the steaming hot sheets
fold crisp white corners together
our smooth chins almost touching
something I still remember with a smile
so different from the last time
I saw Mike in a hospital bed
oxygen mask tight over his nose
a white wrinkled hospital sheet
tucked under his unshaven chin
– Frank Modica
Author’s Note: The simple act of folding sheets can bring back a variety of memories, some good and others painful.… ...continue reading
A bloodied pedestrian.
An old man with a walker.
My grandfather’s dim hallway.
Walking out of the liquor store, a friend.
A friend smoking a joint.
New Year’s, 2015.
Drunk on his bed, a friend.
My father on a log.
My father hiking towards the sun.
A dog with a broken cow skull.
A small babbling brook.
A bum playing a flute.
My sister lighting a cigarette in the yard.
My brother with a full beard.
My brother posing in the rain.
A dog in front of the old market.
An old man smiling on a skateboard.
The taco truck down the street.
Photos in a box
— Memories in my heart.
– Brent Bramer… ...continue reading
The doctor put the disc
into the side of the computer
so the old man could see
the MRI of his old brain.
She gently, almost lyrically
pointed to its dark spaces,
so he could see how time
shrinks all life, even the brain.
But the old man smiled,
and said to the young doctor
[who was but half his age],
‘It’s a funny thing, Doc,
how only in old age have
I become a poet, and
a published one at that!
My brain is lessening,
shrinking, while my mind
is ever growing–
reaching into spaces
both small and vast,
ever seeking,
ever wondering,
ever rhapsodizing
the world….’
– Nolo Segundo
Author’s Note: Getting old is stranger than anyone realizes, until you are the one getting old.… ...continue reading